Saddam in the dock has its downside for Americans

News of Saddam's capture was greeted by a chorus of welcome from governments across the Middle East - but behind the official utterances many will have decidedly more mixed feelings.

Most fulsome - and probably most sincere - was Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who immediately telephoned the US President, George Bush, to congratulate Israel's chief backer on "a great day for the democratic world".

Israelis of all political hues could not fail to be cheered by the humiliation of a man who fired Scud missiles at Tel Aviv in 1991 and donated millions of dollars to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, militants and civilian victims of Israeli military action.

But the realpolitik is more complicated. The fall of Saddam's regime eight months ago removed from the battlefield the Israeli right's main military justification for keeping a stranglehold on the occupied Palestinian territories.

And a possible accelerated US victory in the war in Iraq thanks to Saddam's capture could prove just as risky for hardline Israeli leaders as the US's present bloody entanglement.

The first would restore to Mr Bush the prestige and energy needed to push his stated desire for an independent Palestinian state by 2005. On the other hand, the continuation of fighting would increase his motive for doing so: continuing violence will prove that the wellspring of the conflict is now anti-US, nationalist and Islamic, rather than pro-Baath.

Having hitched their wagon to Saddam's horse when they backed Iraq in the first Gulf War, Palestinian leaders have for the most part remained quiet on the occasion of his downfall.

In the near term, Saddam's failure to go down with all guns blazing will do more to tarnish his legend among his supporters than any stories of mass graves and poisoned gas in Kurdistan. But his loss as a figurehead or source of funds is unlikely to have much direct bearing on a struggle that now stems more from Palestinian nationalism than the brand of Sunni pan-Arabism championed by Saddam.

Iran, which lost hundreds of thousands of lives to Saddam's aggression in the 1980-88 war, was predictably pleased at news of his arrest.

But like Saddam's other sworn enemy, the rival Baathist regime in Syria, Iran's hardline Islamic establishment will be wary of anything that might free up US power for further military adventures in the region.

In the wider Arab world distaste for Saddam's brutality and cult of personality has long been mixed with respect for his stand against the US and Israel.

Had he gone out fighting, like his sons, the Arab street would probably have transformed him into another heroic legend.

As it is, his captors will have to handle his detention and trial carefully if they are not to further inflame the deeply entrenched belief that the Islamic heartland is the victim of another round of creeping colonialism, this time led by the US and Israel.

Saddam in the dock may be more dangerous for the US - and erstwhile friends such as the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and George Bush snr - than he was hiding in a hole.